Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 76

Record label: Kama Sutra

Produced: Eric Jacobsen

Recorded: Columbia Studios, New York; 1966

Released: January 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) 14 (US)

Personnel: John Sebastian (g, v, hm); Zal Yanovsky (g, banjo, v); Steve Boone (b, k, v); Joe Butler (d, v); Roy Hallee (e)

Track listing: Sittin’ Here Lovin’ You; Bes’ Friends; Voodoo In My Basement; Darlin’ Companion; Henry Thomas; Full Measure (S/US); Rain On The Roof (S); Coconut Grove; Nashville Cats (S); 4 Eyes; Summer In The City (S)

Running time: 27.24

Current CD: Camden 74465997322 adds: Darlin’ Companion (John Sebastian Solo Demo); Rain On The Roof (Instrumental Version); 4 Eyes (Alternate Vocal/Extended Version); Full Measure (Instrumental Version); Voodoo In My Basement (Instrumental); Darlin’ Companion (Alternate Vocal/Mix)

Further listening: All four of the Sebastian-era non-film soundtrack Spoonful albums are worth buying, but Daydream (1966) probably runs Hums closest. The Very Best Of (1996) is a good budget-priced compilation.

Further reading: www.lovinspoonful.com

Download: HMV Digital

Nowadays the Spoonful’s chief songwriter, singer and all-round supremo John Sebastian plays in a jugband. And if he survives a gig without being constantly heckled to play Spoonful songs, he is prone to remarking, ‘Thank you for letting me outgrow my twenties’. But if ever a songwriter had no reason to feel embarrassed by his early work it is surely Sebastian. He always wrote with a wit and care for language exceptional in rock, and with The Lovin’ Spoonful he created jubilant music in a distinctive style influenced by rock’n’roll, country, blues and folk.

His admirers included Clive James, who, in 1972, argued that ‘Randy Newman is the only man who has outstripped his brilliant lyric technique’. The Los Angeles Times described Sebastian as ‘one of the very select group of songwriters, including also John Lennon, Ray Davies and Brian Wilson, for which the term genius doesn’t seem just a publicist’s wild notion.’

Listen, for example, to Nashville Cats, in which Sebastian declares, gloriously ungrammatically: ‘There’s 1,352 guitar pickers in Nashville and anyone who unpacks his guitar can play twice as better than I will!’ His lyrics were nonchalantly fun-filled and quirky and irresistibly amusing. Consider Darlin’ Companion, later covered by Johnny Cash, a virtuosic masterclass in rhyme, half-rhyme and assonance, or Summer In The City, a perfect evocation of New York, which Sebastian co-wrote with his brother Mark and bassist Steve Boone.

‘It was a collaboration and the extra strength came out of that,’ asserts Sebastian of his most famous song. ‘We were putting out singles that sounded different all the time,’ he adds, a claim fully justified by this album’s four diverse US hits, Summer In The City, the truly lovely and evocative Rain On The Roof, Nashville Cats and Full Measure.